


Don't Let Go

by jeweniper



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Relationship Issues, idk man, my first angst then ahah, there's some travel and rain, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweniper/pseuds/jeweniper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow love and it will flee thee.<br/>Flee love and it will follow thee.</p><p> </p><p>Or, Tsukishima still isn't sure what he wants or how to make sure he obtains it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Let Go

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write today, and this is not what I wanted to write and I also need to be in bed, but hey! I wrote and that's great. Hope you like it even though not a whole lot is explained nor happens lol. Inspired by the first sentence as posted by fvckenmichael on tumblr.

“I feel like I’m gripping with all my might and you’re not even lifting a finger.” The words come out tiny and stretched through the speaker, and eerily weighed down by the distance between them.

Kei frowns. “We’re not having this conversation right now,” he replies, glaring up into the café menu. It’s melodramatic, and he doesn’t have the energy for it.

“I suppose not. See ya Kei.” Tetsurou hangs up, and the sudden loss turns the ambient chatter around him into an accusatory buzz. He pinches the bridge of his nose and continues his searing stare over the espressos, phone a brick against his ear.

It shouldn’t be like this. He can’t even remember why they had begun fighting, when calls had become chores and taunts had morphed into jabs. At the counter, he places an order for something sweet and hot and with extra whipped cream, but the promise does nothing to quell his irritation.

Maybe they should break up.

He’s had the thought many times over their relationship, originally as a back-up for when the failed arrangement, well, failed. But seasons changed, Tetsurou had stayed away for school, and somehow their oddly-fitted romance had continued on—until recently. He was becoming increasingly upset at Kei's ambiguity on whether or not he could commit to a future together, and he in return felt more inclined towards cool answers and aloof behavior. He wasn’t one to stick around when pushed, and he’d thought Tetsurou had understood that. He gulps at the drink, wincing at the scald it produces. Maybe this was as far as they could go. Thoughtfully entertaining the idea, he alternates between people-watching and worrying his lip, eventually sipping in surprise at the lukewarm foam clinging to the bottom edge of his cup. He hadn’t reached a decision.

Tetsurou’s parting words whisper through his mind as he embarks back into the cold, and it hadn’t been met as a provocation, but something about them unsettles a part of Kei that he doesn’t like. A part of him that is spiteful and easily bruised, that he thought he’d grown out of somewhere between senior year and their anniversary. Or a birthday, he doesn’t remember. Anyway, it has him purchasing a night bus ticket for Tokyo with a competitive stubbornness that he hadn’t consciously agreed with.

When the driver begins to wave on the passengers, he loosely grips his bag of snacks and a book and ignores the slab of concrete in his stomach. He has no idea what he’s going to say when he shows up at Tetsurou’s door, and isn’t entirely sure the door will open for him when he knocks at too-freaking-early in the morning. But the bus is lumbering out of the parking lot and his travel playlist twists ribbons through his brain, so he figures he’ll just have to deal with it, somehow. The way he has dealt with everything surrounding Kuroo Tetsurou, from the first moment that lazy grin bumped into his life and set everything off-kilter. He places his chin into his palm, hiding a grimace behind delicate fingers in the window’s reflection.

He curses everything imaginable when he stands on Tetsurou’s doormat several hours later, exposed to the freezing rain that strikes him casually, and to the feeling of impending humiliation when the apartment resident opens the door. Which he has yet to do, Kei acknowledges with another resigned ring of the doorbell. He looks towards the street with half a mind to give up when the door eventually drags inwards. With a slow turn of the head, he recognizes Tetsurou’s figure in a mosaic of droplet-sized images. He hears his own sharp intake of breath more than he feels it, at the sheer _reality_ of him. The hair is the same, wild as usual if a little more so from the abrupt break from sleep, and a bit shorter on the sides than before. He’s taller than he used to be and the early muscles of a high school athlete have matured on him well with college athletics. Kei’s fingers itch with the sudden compulsion to touch him. He removes his glasses to wipe them instead.

“Hey,” he opens, when it becomes apparent that Tetsurou is more likely to stare at him all night than to start a conversation.

“Hey, yourself.” It is gruff, but not angry. He doesn’t move back from the doorway though.

“Um,” he frowns at the uncertainty in his voice, at the fluttering in his stomach, at the trembling of his cold hands, “can I come in?”

“Why are you here,” he asks instead, more a strained gasp then a question, and Kei notices the dark circles under his eyes, the unnecessarily tight grip on the doorjamb.

Something in him stutters, and that need to feel Tetsurou’s presence returns with a vengeance. It doesn’t need to be like this, he tells himself. They could break up. “I need to talk to you.”

“Kei…” they look at each other, a stalemate of wordy gazes and unexplained pull. He sounds pained, vaguely. “Come on in, I’ll get you a towel.” He disappears into the hallway, and Kei purposefully grabs the doorjamb where his hands had just vacated, still desperate for that contact.

He is looking down at the table, still trying to parse his fragmented thoughts into speakable phrases when the towel drapes over his head, Tetsurou drying his hair in gentle circles. He smirks into the fabric—of course he wouldn’t just be handed the towel. Tetsurou has always been more nurturing then he’d let on, and for a moment Kei is content to indulge in the pampering.

When they finally are seated across from each other at the secondhand table, it is Tetsurou who takes the initiative. “Kei, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” He doesn’t look up from the damp towel before him, swirling absent patterns into the fabric with a finger. “I feel like I’m pushing you, and you don’t deserve that. But I don’t know what else to do. I know how much I need you, and if you don’t need me the same way, we should probably end this.”

Kei ignores both the spike in his anxious heartbeat and the irrational relief at a possible out. He instead focuses on the slope of the other’s shoulders, tight with tension even beneath the soft folds of a well-worn sleep shirt. It is a shirt that once belonged to him, the faded brontosaurus barely visible from the abuse of frequent washes. He takes a deep breath, finally sure of the words to come. “I’m not very good at gripping,” he begins quietly, as though the other had not spoken, “but I can try.” He looks up when the murmur of skin on fabric stops, meeting Tetsurou’s gaze as fully as the first time he’d been provoked to help he and Fukurodani’s ace practice. “Or rather, with you I don’t know how _not_ to try.”

He shivers, mostly from the cold, but also from the silence. He hadn’t added a quip here, had made sure not to weave his words with barbs. It is as honest as he can afford to be right now, vulnerable in not only showing up freezing and unbidden, but also in the admittance. The seconds tick by agonizingly slowly. Perhaps it had been too much.

“Kei,” Tetsurou breathes before he can backtrack, quiet enough to be the air itself. It crawls over his skin, caressing his eyelashes before melting into his ears. “ _Kei_ ,” he repeats, the only warning before he launches himself across the table and scoops Kei into his arms.

“Ugh. Get off me,” he complains, making no move to escape from the embrace. Tetsurou’s arms tremble with something like desperation, but the grip isn’t too tight—and his arms are warm, so very warm.


End file.
